Best Cursor Alternatives in 2026, Free and Paid
Related guide: Claude Code vs Cursor for teams
The main Cursor alternatives in October 2026 are three coding agents, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex and GitHub Copilot, and two AI editors in the same mold as Cursor: Devin Desktop (the editor formerly called Windsurf) and Google’s Antigravity.
Developers have been moving: in JetBrains’ survey of more than 15,000 professional developers, Cursor’s share of developers using it at work fell from 18% in January 2026 to 12% in May–July, while Claude Code’s rose from 18% to 39% and Codex’s from 3% to 16% (JetBrains Research, August 2026).
You don’t have to leave Cursor to try most of them: Claude Code’s VS Code extension and Codex’s IDE extension both run inside it (Claude Code docs, Codex docs).
Cursor itself changed hands this year. SpaceX completed its acquisition of Cursor on August 14, 2026 (Cursor). OpenAI then said it is winding down its contract to supply models to Cursor, with a proposed transition period to November 12, 2026; after that, GPT models in Cursor’s local Chat and Agent need your own OpenAI API key or a gateway such as Azure or Bedrock, and Cursor Tab, Auto and Cloud Agents can’t use them (OpenAI, read October 5, 2026). If your team depends on GPT models, Codex is the direct replacement.
Cursor and its alternatives at a glance
| Tool | What it is | Models | Team price per seat | Where it runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor (for reference) | AI code editor with its own agent | Cursor’s Composer, Grok models trained with SpaceXAI, plus Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and other models | $40 per user a month on Teams | Cursor editor, CLI, cloud agents, JetBrains |
| Claude Code | Anthropic’s coding agent | Claude only: Opus 5.5 by default, Sonnet 5.5, Fable 5.1, Haiku 5.5 | $25 a month on Claude Team Standard, $20 billed annually | Terminal, VS Code and Cursor, JetBrains, desktop app, web, mobile, Slack |
| OpenAI Codex | OpenAI’s coding agent | OpenAI GPT models, led by GPT-6.1 Sol | $25 a month on ChatGPT Business, $20 billed annually | CLI, IDE extension (VS Code, Cursor), ChatGPT desktop app, cloud, GitHub |
| GitHub Copilot | GitHub’s assistant and agent | Models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and others | $19 a month on Copilot Business, with 1,900 AI credits | VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Xcode, Eclipse, Copilot CLI, cloud agent |
| Devin Desktop | Cognition’s AI editor, formerly Windsurf | Cognition’s SWE-2, plus OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and SpaceXAI models | $80 a month per team plus $40 per developer seat | Desktop editor and CLI |
| Google Antigravity | Google’s agentic IDE and CLI | Gemini models, plus some Claude and GPT-OSS models | Free for individuals; business plans through Gemini Enterprise from $30 a seat | IDE and CLI on macOS, Windows and Linux |
Prices and features as listed by each vendor on October 3, 2026: Cursor pricing and models, Claude pricing, Codex pricing, Copilot plans, Devin pricing, Antigravity pricing.
Which alternative fits which team
Claude Code, if you want an agent more than an editor. It works from the terminal or as a panel in your editor, including Cursor, and runs only Claude models. A Team Standard seat is $25 a month ($20 billed annually) against $40 for Cursor Teams, but both include a fixed amount of usage per seat, so the real comparison is what each developer uses past it. The Claude Code vs Cursor guide compares models, project files, skills and analytics row by row.
Codex, if your company already pays for ChatGPT. Codex is included in ChatGPT Plus and Business, so a company on ChatGPT Business already has it. Its IDE extension runs in VS Code and Cursor, and its cloud tasks and GitHub code review sit next to the local agent. See Codex vs Cursor.
GitHub Copilot, if you live on GitHub and want a flat bill. At $19 a seat it’s the cheapest of the team plans here, it covers the most IDEs, and its cloud agent can open a pull request from a GitHub issue (GitHub Docs). Usage comes out of a pool of AI credits, one cent each, which chat, agent mode, code review and the cloud agent all draw from (GitHub).
Devin Desktop, if you want another AI editor. It’s the closest in shape to Cursor. Windsurf became Devin Desktop in June 2026, with plans and prices unchanged, and Cognition’s Devin Local agent replaced the old Cascade agent (Cognition).
Antigravity, if you’re on Google. It’s Google’s agentic IDE and CLI, with a free plan for individuals. Google moved individual developers to it when it retired the Gemini CLI and Code Assist extensions for free and Google AI Pro and Ultra users on June 18, 2026 (Google).
Two smaller options from the same survey: JetBrains AI and its Junie agent (9% of developers) for teams standardized on JetBrains IDEs, and OpenCode (7%), an open-source agent with a terminal interface, desktop app and IDE extension that works with any of 75-plus model providers (OpenCode).
Free options
If you want a free AI for coding, four of these cost nothing to start. Each has limits:
- GitHub Copilot Free: 2,000 code completions a month plus a limited allowance of chat and agent requests (GitHub).
- Google Antigravity: the individual plan is free, with unlimited tab completions and agent use under weekly rate limits (Google).
- Cursor Hobby: free with no credit card, limited agent requests and access to Cursor’s Composer model (Cursor).
- OpenCode: the agent is open source. Connect your own model provider, or use the free models in its Zen service, which are free for a limited time and some of which may use your prompts to improve the model (OpenCode Zen).
No longer alternatives
- Supermaven: Cursor acquired it in November 2024 (Cursor), and it announced its shutdown in November 2025 (Supermaven).
- Codeium: renamed Windsurf in April 2025 (Windsurf), now Devin Desktop.
- Sourcegraph Cody Free and Pro: ended in July 2025 (Sourcegraph).
- Amazon Q Developer: no new sign-ups since May 15, 2026; AWS points customers to Kiro (AWS).
How to decide
Start with the bill, because the plans are built differently. A Cursor Teams seat includes a monthly amount of usage per person, and past it Cursor bills on demand: third-party models at their API price plus $0.25 per million tokens, Cursor’s own models without that fee (Cursor). The Cursor pricing guide lays out every plan and limit. Claude Code and Codex cap usage per seat in five-hour and weekly windows; Copilot draws everything from one credit pool.
Then measure the tools on your own work. Survey shares tell you what’s popular, not what ships in your repository. On our team, Claude Code is the default and Cursor barely shows up: Cursor co-authored 7 of the 3,192 commits in our two repositories from July 5 to October 3, 2026, and of the 866 merged pull requests whose agent recorded its tool between August 12 and October 4, Claude Code wrote 822 and Codex 31. That’s one small team, so it says more about how to measure than about which tool wins. We wrote up the details in what 866 agent-written pull requests show.
The useful questions for a trial month:
- Which tool and model wrote each merged pull request?
- How long did those PRs take from opened to merged?
- What did each merged PR cost in tokens or credits?
- Did people keep using the new tool after the first week?
Zest answers those across tools: its extension and plugins record each engineer’s sessions in Cursor, Claude Code, Codex and Copilot Chat in VS Code, and join them to the pull requests they led to. The Cursor analytics guide shows what that looks like for a team on Cursor.